Fascinating, this washing up liquid

If you need some more frustration in your life...

...indeed. Why ever would you? But if you do, try this. Try to find out, on line, what time on Sunday night the Superbowl coverage begins.

Third attempt and I typed 2013 as part of the search. Third Google link down the queue? Superbowl 2011. Thanks.

I've just remembered the old Channel 4 American Football coverage. It's a big blokes' game, American Football. Strip away all the padding, helmets, body armour, and there's still a mountain of prime beef. The Yanks get ex-players to commentate and summarise. They may have to reinforce the floor of the commentary booth and stock up on the catering side of things, but at least you could take their pundits seriously. We had Nicky Horne. Four feet eleven inches and three stones soaking wet. A disc jockey. I wonder just how that selection process was undertaken?

The Which washing up liquid tests...

...checked out, for fat removing power, foam duration, thickness of liquid and value for money, brands and flavours including:

• Aldi Eucalyptus Antibacterial: if the dishes aren't gleaming, at least your nose is clear.

• Ecover Ecological Camomile and Marigold: that's too ecological, too sandals, muesli and organic cords for words. Are you washing up or having a late night soothing cuppa?

• Fairy Aloe Vera and Cucumber: what is Aloe Vera? Apart from how the late Jack Duckworth greeted his missus?

• Lidl W5 Concentrate Antibacterial Hygienically Clean: that's the Germans for you. No fancy Dan rubbish from the fuitbowl, the salad bar or the vegetable drawer. Just a scientific number, W5, and antibacterial, and hygienic (the object of the exercise) and clean (also the object of the exercise). It does what it says on the...er...squeezy bottle.

• Tesco Daisy Original: daisy?

I'm too tight to subscribe, and not interested enough to take the temporary free membership offer, so I don't know who won. If Ray Winstone at the Bet 365 guys were running a book, I might have a quid (each way) on the Lidl W5.

Massive Attack Submission

I'm listening, for the first time, to 'Protection'. One of those albums that works as a whole. More than the sum of its parts. Eighteen years old.

In The Submission the winning Muslim architect is sleeping with the lawyer on the Muslim lobby committee. As he's not a believer this is understandable. He's also, as all sorts of rabid, violent protests are starting, fasting for the first time, observing Ramadan. That seems to a change occurring. Is the design an Islamic garden? If it is, is that by subconscious accident or (sorry) by design? Just how much did the author base the anti-Islam protest leader character on Sarah Palin?

Happy posh shopping

How much? Oh. That much...

Early evening, outside Waitrose. A tired looking middle aged man is on the mobile phone (actually, that'd be me).

ME: Right. I'm nipping into Waitrose now, I'm starving.

BLISS: (for it is she) can you get some washing up liquid.

ME: OK.

BLISS: Nothing expensive though. It's dear in there.

The 'it's dear in there' was delivered the way you warn small children about strangers with bags of stuck-together cough candy.

Later (too much later) in the kitchen:

BLISS: That's nice. Blackberry and rosemary. Wait a minute. Fairy? I told you...

ME: Pound.

BLISS: What?

ME: Pound. Special offer. Loads of flavours on a special stand. Pound.

BLISS: (looking at me slightly oddly, as if seeing me in a new light) wow. That's a bargain.

ME: (thinking) that's a bit of luck.

I'm rubbish at knowing whether an implied bargain at a supermarket really is one at all. For all I knew I'd bought 50p or 75p worth of washing up liquid and the John Lewis group plc were laughing at me, going “sucker” behind my back even as I approached the till.

ME: (out loud) I know what I'm doing you know.

I think that was a step too far. I was doing alright until then.

ME: (thinking, again) note to self: remember to quit when you're ahead.

Hold on...

...blackberry and rosemary? What happened to washing up liquid? It was green and smelled of pine once. The choice was what size bottle you bought. Now there's a bewildering choice of colours and flavours. There was everything. Well, everything but green. No pine, either. The blackberry and rosemary was my choice because of the fantastic, vivid, purple colour. It replaces a Sainsbury own brand cherry blossom and red petal flavour. What to do? Squirt it into the sink or over your grub? I can understand the rosemary. That smells like it may have some astringent properties. Lemon I get. Cutting through the grease. Coconut I'm struggling with. Are people's plates in poor condition, in need of a moisturiser?

I did get excited once by the adverts for the foamy stuff that removed year old, burnt on student squat spag boll in seconds. Or it did for Ainsley Harriot. Not for me though. Came in a right hi-tec dispenser.

I can't eat all that...(I'll give it a go though)

A couple of photos

I don't know which Bush this refers to. Both? Probably not. Probably aimed at one or t'other. In any case a bit of old-world graffiti harking back to the pre-tagging, pre-Banksy, cats like plain crisps / free George Davis days...

Here's one of those confusing ones. If we're to take our litter home, isn't that a redundant...er...litter bin?

I can't eat all that!

A first today. My first cup of tea and sausage bap from one of those roadside vans. Dave's diabetic and needs to eat regularly to manage it, so he's great at breaking my habitual “eat when you've finished work” approach. The tea was decent, in an oversized polystyrene cup, and the bloke operating the van honest enough to admit losing count:

“One tea, none. One tea. Two sugars. Or four sugars. May have sugared it twice. Let me know and I'll do you another.”

Dave had a bacon baguette. None of those photos you get in the Wimpy, not clues as to what to expect. Six rashers and a whole baguette, halved, on the biggest paper plate you've ever seen. It was good, he said, so I can only assume it was boredom that had him feeding the last bit to the crows hanging around in the layby.

One day all this will be yours

The Submission

Amy Waldman's what if...a Muslim won an open competition to design the 9/11 memorial has just hit another couple of what ifs:

What if he and a colleague and best friend were looking to start up on their own. To the point of registering a company name. Without their practice knowing. What if the Muslim architect hadn't told said best mate and potential future partner that he was entering a design. What if the press did some Google magic and arrived, unannounced, en mass, at the no-longer-potential future partner's door?

What if the reporter given the exclusive had a huge ambition and ego to manage, and she was quickly relieved of the exclusiveness of her story?

What if the Governor had a huge (presidential) ambition and ego to manage, and wasn't remotely interested in the rights and wrongs, just political expediency?

The headline said Queen Beatrix hands crown to son

See? This is where I don't understand the monarchy thing. Not one little bit. Would you want to hear:

“Right. That's you prepped for your appendectomy, Mr Jones. Now. I've got a pressing engagement at the golf course, so my son will be carrying out the operation. Yes, he is an accident-prone, clumsy, sausage-fingered oaf with a masters in Civil Engineering and doesn't know, in medical terms, his glutes from his elbow. Ha! He does know either of those from a hole in the ground. Because they're what he's trained in. But, anyway, he's my son so off you both go. And good luck.”

“Gas leak?” “Yes” “Well, Mr Jones, I've another potential gas leak to go and look at, so, may I introduce my son, who will look after you.” “Is he GasSafe?” “Heavens no. He's an actor between roles. Good luck. Bye.”

“FIRE, FIRE” “Jump on lads, try not to crash into anything on your way there...”

That's what I don't understand. Sorry. No offence to you nice English people. Just don't get it. My fault.

Don't vote, it only encourages them

Our elected leader want to be judged on one thing only. Reducing the deficit. All the other stuff can take a running jump. Education. Health. That second rate rubbish. The claim? Reduced by a quarter. That's if you go for their figures. Their figures take 24% and make that a quarter. That 24% is the absolute best of a bewildering array of figures that start at about 6% and rise to...er...24%. That's a bit selective, isn't it, in terms of key performance indicator. That absolute best? That's for the last financial year. That means you need to ignore everything since April last year. That's a little while ago. Taking those months into account the 24% drops dramatically. Economist's preferred measure stands at 6.4%. That a quarter of the quarter being claimed. Or, nowhere remotely near. Or sufficiently far removed, I'd argue, to illustrate yet again the insanity of wasting your time voting for any of them, while there's an unwatched episode of The Walking Dead on the Sky recorder box, a White Stripes you've not yet listened to, a Bergman film unwatched, or a Pynchon novel to read. Or your hair to wash.

Chicken salad...how much?

The Submission

Amy Waldman had written one of those 'what if...' novels. What if there was an anonymous competition for architects to design the 9/11 memorial to be constructed on the site of the Twin Towers, and a Muslim architect won.

About a third of the way through, the jury are squirming, wriggling, backpeddling and looking for loopholes. Press leaks are surfacing. The architect is non-practising (in religious, not architectural terms) almost to the point of atheism, but he's won the competition after all and feels he should have what's his by right, as an American. The Muslim political lobbyists are part-supporting, part-using him. The local politicians are desperately looking for the same loopholes as the jury, looking over their shoulders at the voters, and looking at what they should be saying according to their party lines.

It's a gripping and intense what if?

The New Statesman...

...has published (one of those gallery of pictures with a brief note for each one, that take an age to get through on line) the ten worst UK pop bands. Pleasingly, I've neither heard of, or had to endure hearing most* of them:

At 10: 5ive*. A boy band. Therefore, of no interest to blokes.

At 9: Liberty X*. The losers on a pre-X-Factor load of rubbish called Popstars. Not seen or heard either.

At 8: Hear'Say*: They were the winners on Popstars. Apparently.

At 7: Wet Wet Wet. First ones I knew anything about. They were actually taken quite seriously for some reason. I feel less alone now. I always thought there were two 'Wets' too many in the name for an accurate description and for the trading standards to be met.

At 6: Busted*: Think one of the kids might've had a dabble, at a very early age.

At 5: PJ and Duncan: Now known as Ant and Dec. Swindlers and cheats they're still an overpaid slime oozing from the TV set. As with Wet Wet Wet, it's good to have someone else slate them to assuage feelings of loneliness. They're rapidly heading for that national treasure, as revered as the Queen Mum corner, when they should be in the corner of a dumpster somewhere. Bodies disposed of.

At 4 all the way to 1: Dolly Rockers*, H & Claire*, One True Voice*, and Fast Food Rockers*.

In the world of rock 'n' roll, how did anyone go with One True Voice for a name without seeing the One True Vice as the must have alternative? I bet, while claiming some legendary superlad status, that fat fraud Moyles played most of those above because they were on the playlist. He's about as laddish as the South Surrey Women's Institute Sewing Circle.

Will Self on food

Also in the NS Will Self describes the chicken in his smoked chicken salad as tasking like petrol station ham. As with the bands above, I'm happy not to have had to endure that experience. It sounds memorable, and disgusting. The bit I had difficulty with was a chain charging £15.81 for a chicken salad. I'm back to my local pub, how can they justify £8 for a burger and chips riff here, but, really, there's restaurants will serve you properly cooked liver and bacon, with creamed spinach, new potatoes and perfectly cooked French beans for half that. During a recession, while more restaurants go to the wall, it really should be easier than ever before to eat good food, properly cooked, at reasonable cost. I'd need some all-singing all-dancing smoked chicken salad to make me feel happy handing over sixteen quid.

Lucky pants, the facts

Theology and the philosophy of lucky pants

All I said was something about the ruthless always being ready to exploit the beliefs and naivety of others. Television evangelists. Psychics. Performing to theatres full of ticket buyers, who don't question the seer's inability to foresee anything useful, leaving them unable to win the lottery or predict the result of the 1:45 at Wincanton and put their feet up in the Bahamas. Mediums. Clairvoyants. All those that advertise in the Fortean Times (is that where they advertise?).

In an outrageous non-sequitur, this lead to the questioning of whether lucky pants can affect the results of sporting contests (as if this has ever been in any doubt), and the mock-scrutiny of the shirt numbers, changing room routines, and suchlike that appease the sporting gods. The existence of the sporting gods themselves was, in an act of extreme heresy, questioned. As you can imagine, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

There are, actually, two quite distinct and different things going on here. Lucky pants, naturally, don't remain lucky forever. Sooner or later the wrong wash cycle, an unfortunate change of fabric conditioner or being folded up the wrong way, and they become good as useless. Lucky pants come and go.

The changing room rituals are a self-preservation thing. I broke bones in the 6 shirt (never wore that number again) and the 8 shirt (never wore that again, either). Currently I put my kit on left, then right. Left sock, right sock, left boot, right boot. This isn't designed to secure a victory, or even a decent personal performance. These are more prophylactic measures, to avoid the trip to A&E, the career-ending injury, or even the embarrassing minor injury that forces you out for a few weeks.

So. I remain an atheist and a sceptic about the supernatural. But, with a universe chock full of invisible dark matter and anti matter and God particles and time-travelling particles, there must soon be a lucky pants theory, approaching the (event) horizon.

Looper

I wish I'd seen this at the cinema. Apart from anything else, I'd've watched it in one long sitting, and not been tempted by the kettle and the Earl Grey tea bags, the pre-match blogs and newspaper sites. I find myself increasingly faintly to fatally irritated by interruptions.

He gets intimidated by the dirty pigeons, they love a bit of it

“Look at those pigeons” said K, home cheering up DLL, “they're so fat they can hardly walk.” They are. Not so long ago, while not exactly sleek and svelte, they weren't in the supersize bracket they are in now. The feeding regime in the back garden is superb, and it's soothing looking out at all the birds coming and going. But we could be heading for problems with the pigeons. They'll need miniature cranes to get in and out of their nests soon.

They are the Griswalds of the bird kingdom. They turn up in numbers, noisy and bickering. They don't hit the bird bath. Ever. Though I don't think 'Parklife' made reference to that sort of 'dirty'. If they gain just a little more weight they'll have disabled badges on their wings, and be allowed to nest on the lower branches, in special extra-wide roosts.

Brighton away in the cup today

Wenger's press conference yesterday was bit of a gem. Bleating on about teams buying too many players in the window where they can, er, buy and sell players, is madness. Of the highest order. Do you think any of those fans celebrating their teams lifting trophies give a flying one about how much part the cheque book played in that success?

Wenger's using our club for a pet project the way Thatcher and Blair used the country for their experiments in social engineering and exercises in acting as the hand of their imagined god.

Waitrose Weekend...

Waitrose Weekend...

...summarised here to save you the trouble. Vietnamese. That's the 2013 buzzword. Along with triple-dip and referendum. Referen-dumb-and-dumber, even.

Vietnamese, according to the trade magazine The Grocer, is the next big thing. Cuisine-wise. Waitrose are peddling 'kits' for people too middle-class to visit an ethnic supermarket. A pho kit (how you put noodles, vegetables, meat and water into kit form baffles me, but then I'm properly thick in that department). They're also selling a dipping sauce. This will be fish and soy sauces, with some garlic and chilli thrown in and sold at £exorbitant / fluid ounce.

We had some fantastic Vietnamese food in America. The dishes were highly flavoured, yet light, garnished with unexpected mint and sweet basil leaves. I love street markets and speciality markets. Anything a Waitrose or other supermarket has on the shelves will already be old news.

The wonderful Alan Davies talks about going to the grocers with his mum, where their big leather bag was filled with loose, muddy, dusty spuds. There's green credentials before they were invented. I remember going out with one of those bags, some coins, and a note listing what I was to come back with. I handed the note and the coins to the grocer, and went home with a bag full of loose, unwrapped, unpackaged vegetables, and the change. He says that you don't see spuds with mud on now. I have seen some new potatoes that seem to have a sanitised, clean, sandy, rust coloured coating which looks suspiciously sprayed on to please anyone longing for the good old days.

I had the misfortune to miss out on hitting the CD button in time, and recently heard a supermarket spokesman talking about 'second-class' carrots, meaning those that have not grown into the perfect tapered torpedo shape demanded by the modern consumer. Apparently they might have to stop throwing away these misshapes. What a terrible waste. Maybe if they concentrated more on taste and less on cosmetics we'd all be happier and healthier.

Brian Turner writes about haggis (which is absolutely delicious, as are faggots and most things that get that childish nose upturning reaction from too many) and rumbledethumps, which also sound fantastic: mashed swede and spuds, mixed with braised green cabbage, topped with mature cheese and baked in the oven. That's straight on the to-do list. In times of wariness about national stereotypes and ethnicity, it seems the sweaties are widely regarded as robust enough for the new rules not to apply. His article is Burns' Night based, but gets a mention of wearing a kilt in there, refers to himself as a sassenach, there's Scotland the Brave played by a piper and drams of malt whiskey. He signs off with 'Och aye the noo'. Brian! No deep fried Mars bars for afters?

Richar Hawley – Truelove's Gutter

I stumbled on Coles Corner in a second hand / charity / junk shop. Bit of luck, there. Ex-Pulp guitarist, I think. Beautiful, mellow voice. Real Sunday morning stuff.

Meanwhile, back at Waitrose Weekend...

...Simon Williams, who looks like an anorexic Christopher Walken, and apparently was a star in the original (was there a non-original?) Upstairs Downstairs, chooses his six best books. Nice one Simon. Tale of Two Cities. A PG Wodehouse collection, an Ian McEwan, a Rose Tremain. See? Lidl just give you pictures of next week's offers and Sainsbury want to charge you for their magazine.

There's even a sudoku and crossword. There's the link to book the view from the Shard tour. The Guardian critic said the best thing about the view from the Shard is that you can't see the Shard. Bit picky, that. There's sport on the back page with Jon Agnew and Clare Balding and some telly pages I skipped past quickly as there was a photo of the odious Jeremy Clarkson, my tip for a good bet to follow Saville and Stuart Hall.

Lost for words...

DLL...

...is one incredibly courageous and wonderful kid.

We're probably neck and neck on the she wants to come home and I just want her home-ometer.

This is going to be rubbish from this point onwards because my mind and heart are elsewhere.

Man kicks ballboy

Eden Hazard tries to retrieve the ball. Does or does not clip the ballboy. A clip at worst. The ballboy, already wasting time to help his team, makes the most of it. Hazard gets sent off. Twitter goes mental. Opinions everywhere.

Broadly, there's the Jeremy Clarkson: what a bad example, etc, etc, bore drone.

There's the Pat Nevin: shouldn't do that, but the frustration's understandable.

Two points I've not seen or heard made are:

Every time any schoolboy, anywhere, sits down on a ball, one of his mates will gleefully put his hoof through the ball. No harm done.

If players trusted the officials to control time-wasting, then they wouldn't take the law into their own hands. Unfortunately, from ballboys (either on instruction: Stoke, Blackburn, Mark Hughes, Sam Alerdyce, I'm looking at you here) or on their own initiative taking an age getting the ball into play, to the long throw, towel, drawn-out affairs, officials fail, regularly, to add on enough time to adequately compensate for that wasted.

I like AD's suggestion. Waste thirty seconds, we'll add a minute on. A minute? That's plus two. That would instruct and equip referees to do something about it.

Mad Jens

I don't know if this is on You-Tube or anything. United, one-nil ahead, are taking an age over every goal kick, free kick, throw-in, whatever. Blatantly running down the clock as we push for an equaliser.

We equalise.

We go two-one up (I think).

Jens gets the ball then pretends to pull something getting back over the advertising hoarding, in the funniest bit of injury-feigning ever.

United players, bench, the lot all go ballistic, which is rich after their antics while they were ahead. Arsenal fans fall even more in love with the mad goalkeeper.

Exile and Elvis

Always took candy from strangers, didn't want to get me no trade

There are, I think, three must have Rolling Stones albums:

Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street.

I did say 'I think' there, before hanging, drawing and quartering. I've realised that of those three, I most often turn to Exile, despite there being much to forgive. It's messy. Big, sprawling, a double album (in olden vinyl terms) that probably could've been cut back with more aggressive editing. Loose. Undisciplined.

Well, his coat is torn and frayed

it's seen much better days.

Just as long as the guitar plays

let it steal your heart away

Big, messy and undisciplined as it is, Exile on Main Street is beautiful. Warm. Human. Warts 'n' all.

You don't wanna walk and talk about Jesus

You just wanna see his face

Bad word

Sky Go is a wonderful thing, even if the tightwads are withdrawing the download now, watch later facility as part of the service and then adding it back at an additional monthly charge. They seem unaware that their competition in this respect is cut-throat, and the £5 / month is poor value.

I can watch sport on the laptop while BLISS and DLL watch the telly. I only 'book' the TV for the occasional event.

I'm usually very relaxed about 'bad' language, and don't subscribe to the myth that only inarticulate people swear. However, there's a word that pops up all to regularly, one that has no place on the football, rugby, or cricket pitch:

BUFFERING

Elvis is cool...

...until he melts. Our neighbour's magnificent snow Elvis:

Meat is murder

Everyone's a flexitarian, aren't they?

If I've got this right, flexitarians eat what they like, when they like, but with a vegetarian bias. This is a wonderful idea. These guys might just save the planet. Seriously. What a wonderful way to get anyone who can't make the full conversion to out and out veggie for whatever reason (full English, bacon sandwiches, rare steak with French mustard, chicken vindaloo, liver and bacon, roast turkey, cha sui pork, rare roast beef) to adopt a largely vegetarian diet, with loopholes rather than lapses.

Of course, there'll be the mockitarians: pretend flaxitarians. No, the two veg in meat and two veg don't qualify. Nor do the chips in a Big Mac meal. There'll be the protests from the chin-scratching quasi-intellectuals who claim we need to eat meat because we're carnivores. We're not. At least I don't think so. We're omnivores with dental make-up to eat both. There'll be demi-flexitarians, there'll be five-day flexitarians who limit their meat intake to the weekend. They'll hit the butchers like binge drinkers hit the town centre offie on a Friday night.

As always there'll be the no-brain-itarians. These ugly, nasty, spite-filled creatures are recognisable by the way they mock and decry vegetarians while being unable to eat liver, or kidneys, or haggis or brawn. They blanch at the lips, feet, ears and organs that are in those frozen sausages they crave. They go green when you tell them those delicious brochettes were ox-heart. There's a lot of them eager to crawl out of the woodwork every time they hear someone order a veggie-burger, and the first ones to crawl away on their bellies when they find out their 100% beef is mostly hoof, head, genitals, tongue, organs. Oh, and horse. Naturally. How can you have 100% beef without the horse?

Food is shrinking

Due to JND. Just Noticeable Difference. Half the amount for the same price? Too noticeable. Shoppers will buy something else. Cut away a sliver, and sales don't suffer. I can only see the JND technique being effective as a one-off. Otherwise it's death by a thousand cuts, isn't it?

So, what's got smaller? Among others:

Branston Pickle. Reduced size jars, same price. Before they marketed the smooth version, the notoriously fussy Smithy used to spoon the contents of a newly opened jar into the blender, smoothify it, and spoon it back in.

Dairylea. I can't remember, ever, having gone through the palaver of getting the foil off a wedge of this, actually spreading it on anything before scoffing it.

Coco Pops. I shouldn't wonder if this isn't a likely candidate for the Harvest Apple Pie Syndrome. Big box stays the same, just less inside it.

Cadbury Dairy Milk. Two less squares. Made for sharing. Just with fewer people.

Quality Street. Probably another Harvest Apple Pie thing. Less in the same-sized tin.

John West Tuna. John West say less is offset by better quality. I'm struggling to see how you can tin better quality tuna. Unless it was previously contaminated with lesser species. Increased quality would be more applicable to the Quality Street. “Less of those ones no-one likes” the adverts could say.

Finally, despite urban myth and that French and Saunders sketch, Wagon Wheels are the same size they've always been. Their spokesman said any perceived reduction is due them appearing much bigger when you were younger, and your hands were smaller.

Livercake

Batmobile for sale

They're all for sale. Which one would you buy? A favourite story is the thoroughly tried, tested, designed, built...did I say tried and tested? No-mistakes-this-cost-a-fortune. First or second big Batman film batmobile. What could go wrong after all the testing and re-testing?

First full dress rehearsal. Batman jumps in. Cape. Mask. The lid slides forwards...

...and traps his ears.

Shackle the press? Literally?

Before banging on about the Levenson inquiry being, or not being, or not being implemented enough. Look at Turkey. Journalists languishing in jail for not agreeing with the people in power. Do you trust our people in power enough to let them decide who is allowed to write, and what?

Me neither.

The well-publicised...

...first diagnosis test for prostrate cancer is the finger up the bottom. Mirthfully narrated by many a raconteur, belly up to the bar, giving the full lowdown on the doctor's bedside manner. See Ricky Gervais' character in the first series of Louis CK.

Accident or design, then, the TV advert tagline:

“Help us crack it”?

Liver cake

Yep. Liver. Cake. It's for dogs. White dog seems to think it's absolutely yummy. BLISS found a recipe on line, and I did the shopping.

“What'd'you buy all that liver for?” she said when I returned. With the liver. A kilo of liver.

“Because” (in my best Vivian (Young Ones) voice) “that's what the recipe you found requires. A kilo. Those are two half-kilo packs of liver.”

As usual, though, BLISS was right. A kilo of liver, and a kilo of flour. Eggs. Milk. Water. This lady with the Internet recipe, just how big is her dog? An Irish Wolfhound / Blue Whale cross? Something from Jurassic Park?

We're now the proud owners of enough liver cake to sink the Titanic. With that thought in mind, BLISS went into full-on responsible parent mode, to DLL:

“Eat the ice cream” she said “and the pies.”

“Eh?”

“I'm going to need space in the freezer.”

Hackney, That Red-Rose Empire

Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire

I was lucky and got a copy of this for Christmas. Doubly lucky, because I got a copy of Ghost Milk, too. I've some library loans that I should, really, be reading, but the draw of Sinclair's writing has proved too strong to resist.

Sinclair has lived in Hackney for forty years. That's an immense amount of material to work with. While every part of London is unique, there's always recognisable elements to any one that are relevant elsewhere. Markets, cafés, barbers, pubs, the hubs of community eschewed by, frowned upon by the politicians who preface every pronouncement with the 'community' buzzword. He describes poor housing as: “Holding camps for social engineering...visited by the preacher / politician Tony Blair, at the start of a glittering career of photo opportunities.” What does a house made up of career politicians packed off to boarding schools as soon as they're dry overnight, who will pack their own kids off the same way, know of community?

Rachel Lichtenstein described the last-straw mugging of her child-minder on her own doorstep, that made her move away: “I told [the big, dreadlocked, black ex-boxer living opposite] about it. He said 'if I'd seen him, I'd have chopped his arms off with my Samurai sword.'” I understand bloke, it's the only language I'm fluent in. Her neighbour was trying to be comforting.

A bi-polar clash

We're playing the other team from Fulham today. We've two teams. Either of them may turn up for any given game. Same for them. There's the Arsenal, and Chelsea teams. Then there's our evil twin, Give-You-The-Arse-nal, and they've got Leigh-on-Sea (reserves).

In order of likelihood:

Proper Chelsea v GYTA

They rip us a new one, and Benitez' hoodoo over Wenger continues. Wenger talks about aggression and authority, yet that's just what he's stripped from the squad pursuing his dream of textbook football.

Might lead to investment in the squad, buying in guys who can play that are also blessed with a psychopathic streak.

Leigh-on-Sea (reserves) v proper Arsenal

We tear them a new one. Their fans hate Benitez that little bit more. Abramovich brings in his uncle Vlad as caretaker interim temporary manager.

Leigh-on-Sea (reserves) v GYTA play out a 0-0 bore draw.

Proper Chelsea v Proper Arsenal

Great for the neutrals a fantastic game of football is decided by a Nuttyboy Winterburn memory reviving thirty yard top corner thunderbolt from Gibbs. Uncle Vlad replaces Benitez and we don't buy anyone and finish 6^th.

Match update

More complicated than previously anticipated. Bi-polarity can exhibit half-to-half. Unfortunately the second half display was rendered irrelevant and redundant by the first half. Will Giroud ever realise that he's a 6'4” monster, or remain a “ooohhhh, it hurrrrrts” wimp all his life?

Django

The D is silent

We saw Django Unchained. Yet another great idea from DLL, even if it's hardly going out on a limb. Tarrantino films don't disappoint.

The unchaining happens early on, and then there's loads of sharp talk, dark humour and violent mayhem. The locations are beautiful, the light changing as the story goes through the seasons.

I have not read any reviews. Danny Baker tweeted his wife's opinion of the critics' collective opinion. Not really dependable, she said, but in a more Tarrantino-esque profanity-rich way. I did hear a short radio item about Samuel L Jackson playfully trying to “get his interviewer to use the n-word”, and the film is littered with these, including references to the nigger cage, and a mining company throwing dead slaves into the nigger hole. Anyone with their knickers in a knot about the language used in a film might be better off publicising and protesting the continued use of people as an expendable resource through exploitation and a twisted pursuit of financial gain at whatever cost. There's still mining, sugar and cocoa, Chinese extraction companies, a long list of the very wrong, going on while our politicians debate the size of Mars bars and why Warrington Council ran out of salt during the snow.

I don't like censorship. Something deep down tells me it is a bad thing. Bad, fatally flawed, ineffective. One of those things that is so unwieldy and ponderously impossible to operate that even were it sensible it won't work and isn't practical. As it isn't sensible in any case, the idea should be on the 'rubbish idea' pile and left behind for the rubbish idea it is. Try this: who do you know that you would 100% trust to be the arbiter of what your kids and you should and shouldn't be exposed to, and when. How do you apply that to soldiers, to firemen, to ambulancemen dealing with trauma in real life? How do you moderate their exposure?

That said, whatever you think about censorship, this is plainly and patently ridiculous: DLL is seventeen. Very shortly she'll be eighteen. Why does getting her in to see Django go from a criminal operation planned and executed down to the last little detail one day, to a right the next? Absurd

A nice Andy Murray

Our favourite takeaway. So special, it has it's own timezone. The film was two and three quarter hours long. BLISS placed the order for twenty five past seven. We left the cinema at half past, had to walk back to the car and drive about twenty minutes. “This time” I thought, “we must've finally nailed it”.

Nope. Still a twenty five minute wait, with two “two minutes, they're just putting it all together” progress reports along the way. Oh, and just a garlic and a chilli naan short when we unpacked the bag. I committed heresy. “Should we go somewhere else?” Apparently we shouldn't. BLISS's right. They get the food spot on. That's the important thing.

Snow

More snow on the way. K's new bed didn't arrive (no delivery drivers, depot about fifty miles away). Our road remains low on the gritting pecking order. As in not on it at all. Should be interesting if there's a drop in temperature as well as more snow. It's uphill at either end, and I'm awful in the snow (BLISS would say the 'in the snow' is redundant).

Adjusting scaffolding. Quietly.

Looking for a WiFi connection...

...in a new place. As well as the usual commercial hotspot £3.50 per hour rubbish, there's a locked network named:

getyourownwifi[insert insult of your choice here]

Refreshingly honest and to the point.

A long drive up snowy roads...

...and a (slightly nasty) laugh. Two cars almost opposite each other had run off the road. The huge, expensive 4 x 4 had hit a tree. Well. They're invaluable in the snow. Don'tcha'know.

Almost like being a grown up

Friday night. Curry. Pop into the pub. Conversation. Staying up late.

Note to self: must get out more.

Wickes...

...opens at 07:00. My weekend working hours are going to go down like a lead balloon round here...

...last time the conversation went:

BLOKE NEXT DOOR, FROM BEDROOM WINDOW: Oy. Mate. (South African accent). Can you keep the noise down?

ME: (No attempt to disguise the sarcasm, these gits having kept me awake on occasion with loud, very very bad music) okay, I'll adjust this scaffolding as quietly as I can.

BLOKE: It's Sunday morning.

ME: Just as well I'm an atheist then.

BLOKE: It's eight o'clock.

ME: Yeah. We've got a lot to do.

BLOKE: Yeah. Well. Make sure you keep the noise down.

ME: (dropping scaffold clips onto scaffold boards right by the window) get some beauty sleep, mate. You need it.

There was part of me that thought he had a point. But it was a very small, quiet and insignificant part and it didn't affect the noise level one iota.

New dress code

I wasn't home early...

So I thought:

“Have you eaten?” was a fair question.

“I've just got in”, said BLISS.

I looked again to make sure. Yep. Dressing gown. PJs.

“Well. Not long got in” she said.

“New dress code” said DLL.

Looks like it's pretty relaxed.

There's a sign in the car

CK caught my attention:

“Do us a favour. Next time you check over those semis, put this up.”

Dirty great “For Sale at Auction” sign. I was passing them on my way back, but I don't happen to have a hammer and nails in my suit pocket.

“There's no instructions on the back”, I said, “it may get installed upside down.”

Then I put it in the back of the car. It totally blocked the rear view. Too long a drive for that. Try the back seat. Now being a bloke presented with two options:

(A) Jump in, reverse two feet, open rear door wide, slide sign into back seatwell;

or:

(B) Spend ages trying to force the sign in with the door partly open and part blocked by the car parked next to mine, even though it patently wasn't going to fit in a month of Sundays, before resorting to the inevitable option (A);

naturally I went for (B), then (A).

Then I called CK.

“That sign?”

“Yeah”

“Got another one?” I think I heard the building shake as he fell over.

“Why?”

“I've broken it.” Long silence. You could almost detect his hand shaking.

“You haven't.”

“No. Of course I haven't.”

“Thank god, don't do that to me.”

“But Gary did ran it over.”

“He didn't.”

“No, of course he didn't.”

He told me to Foxtrot Oscar. Then he hung up. I will, naturally, photoshop a photo of the sign when it's installed. Upside down, naturally.

What's in your burger?

Shergar burgers at Tesco

There's going to be some cheap, part-defrosted burgers on the market. Hurry. They're in rubbish containers near you right now. While stocks last. There's a horsemeat-avesrion spectrum. From the 'so what?' to the total meltdown. Or the normal to the stupidly anal. No doubt the wrong end of the spectrum will include individuals claiming their lives are in tatters after eating burgers with between 29% and traces of horsemeat. They also found some pig DNA in the beefburgers. Whoops! There's some more going off pop among the super-anal.

It may not be meat, in any case. Other parts are used as binders, and other elements of making a cheap, frozen, puck of whatever convenient for the busy mum of today, as she rushes from Iceland to Lidl collecting pre-packaged, chemically treated, inedible filth along her path. Like hooves. They have glue-like qualities, when melted down, don't they?

The reason these things belong in the bin is that they're absolutely awful. Tasting. I'd happily scoff something decent with whatever DNA, rat, roadkill, human, in whatever quantities you like, and reject supermarket frozen cabinet rubbish on the grounds that more is spent on the packaging and promotion than on the contents, and therefore the contents taste dreadful, or of nothing at all.

Now our busy mums can turn to their moaning little brats and say: “shut up, and eat your horse burger”.

NY new gun laws...

...are among the toughest in the states. Way to go New York. Apparently, including other measures, it will now be 'more difficult' for people with mental problems to purchase firearms.

Going out on a limb here, but what does 'more difficult' mean? I was a teenage werewolf, but I'm alright noooowwwwwwwwww. Aw, g'wan mister, sell me a gun. I 'aint dun had a turn since 2009...

How's the gunshop bloke meant to assess the mental capabilities or otherwise of his customers? Are people going to have to carry, among all that other stuff, proof of sanity? It could be a bit awkward for the counter assistant. People walking in twitching and shouting, dressed in odd clothes, only to sue for trauma when questioned about their mental history.

His master's croak

Cheap laughs, cheap shots...

...nothing to be proud of, I know. But, anyway, here's a photo of our education secretary.

Michael (Tim Nice-But-Dim) Gove. That's education he's running. He wrote the introduction to the Bible, you know. The Prologue According to St Tim (Nice But Dim).

His Master's (losing his) Voice...

...as another High Street chain goes into administration. An awful shame. There's too many retailers going under, some iconic brands.

However, didn't these guys ruthlessly put the old, local, independents out of business?

In my lifetime the High Street has become homogenised. From a range of useful to thoroughly weird one-off, small, local, often family-run businesses, to what the High Street is now: a long, narrow, outdoor shopping Mall, for the elderly, the nostalgic and people without the means of transport to hit the nearest out of town retail park (if ever there was a misuse of the word park, it's in the context of the retail park – warehouses with some racking and tills at the front, all for show fit out and leaking roof) or Arndale Centre. The same old same old shops, over and over again, town after town.

I remember an old record shop. All the LP sleeves were in racks, empty. The records were stacked, in anonymous white cardboard sleeves behind the counter. Singles were asked for by name. The charts were displayed on felt notice boards, spelt out in small plastic letters. Unguarded. Letters did go missing on occasion. They were smaller versions of the old cinema signs.

This sort of thing.

There were soundproof booths where you could have a record played. Try before you buy, sort of thing. The booths were soundproofed with this perforated hardboard, a material unique to record shops, and uniquely useless acoustically. Sound attenuation depends on mass (hardboard's about as lightweight as you can get), continuity (perforations?), and thickness. Eventually there were headphones. These were like something from outer space. They virtually were cans strapped to your head.

The big boys have had few sleepless nights over shutting down places like this:

They've given us the usual roster of shops: Waterstones Books, HMV Records, Costas, Nero, Starbucks Coffee, Greggs Pasties, KFC, McDonalds, Wimpy Fast Food, Argos Everything, you can reel them off. All the same, everywhere.

Perhaps a few empty units driving down rents will help with regaining some diversity. If not there's always the charity shops to move in.

The best...er...what exactly?

The best a man can get?

That's Gillette's claim. I fell for it. For years. There's the inference, too. The best [shaving products] a man can buy, but also the best [generally] a man can get.

I have it on good authority (wife, daughters) that the best a bloke can get does not equate to particularly high aspirations. Even when not overtly engaged in anything irritating, there's always something. There's jazz. There's football. There's cricket. There's headphones. There's that ability to quote the 'love the smell of napalm in the morning' Apocalypse Now speech.

There's the inability to resist ending any phone call that involves a bit of tact and diplomacy, after hanging up (but only a microsecond after hanging up) with a Bruce Willis mumbled Die Hard 1 “yippie-ki-aay, m*********er”.

There's that thing where, the greater the need to resist rude, sweary, gutter filth jokes and one-liners, the more of them pop straight into your head. The best a man can get? We're a gender hardwired to see the 50% mark as a triumph of unprecedented proportions. The greater the risk? The more chance we'll get it wrong. Royal weddings? Only attended by females and wannabe females. What proper bloke could resist being immortalised as leaping up at an England wicket, or an Arsenal goal, or a Harlequins try, just as some future monarch says 'I do' (and what do you do?).

Anyway, five blades in a vibrating, battery-using extravaganza isn't the best, actually. I found myself doing three (one with, two against the grain) passes with a five blade, battery-operated, vibrating monstrosity, with replacement blade packs so expensive that they had security tags like the tellies. That's fifteen blades, and an indifferent shave.

No different to the shave achieved by three passes with a single sharp blade. With, across, and against the grain. Aftershave splash and job done. Maybe not the absolute best a man can get but darn close considering our starting point. If two blades are better than one, three better than two, five better than three, then why not a huge, static, cheese grater size thing with a billion blades that you rub your face on?

Honest 'guv, it's dah lead wot dunnit

Not the lead in the bullets. Crime wave, violent crime wave, follows on twenty years from infants absorbing traces of lead. Plumbing. Paint. Petrol. Wherever it gets into the blood, violence follows, about twenty years on.

There's any number of studies confirming the correlation. Just the one against. Sponsored by the Ethyl Corporation. They were a major manufacturer of tetraethyl lead.

There's one remaining manufacturer. Where? Here. Ellesmere Port. Innospec. Export only. To wherever hasn't a ban in place. Yet. Cluedo? The lead pipe. In the legacy plumbing / paint on the skirting / four star petrol in the Rev Green's Bentley. Innospec, with the tetraethyl lead, in the middle east.

Arsene...

...you're mad, mate. Call it a day.

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad

Another great call by DLL. I fancied this but needed a push in the right direction. A modern take on the 1940's cops against the mobs movies. Done very well. Dark, with some great lines.

I'm coming to depend on DLL for film advice the way I used to MM for music. I do seem to need crowbaring out of the door recently. Probably age-related. Future attractions include: Die Hard 5, a must-see. I don't think I've seen any at the cinema since the first one.

The Guardian hundred top novels

I always find these interesting. They usually take a subjective approach. That ensures the lists vary according to the compiler, a good thing, I think. I managed to tick forty four of them, including:

1, Don Quixote. Elderly nutter sets of for madcap adventures, funny and wise.

3, Robinson Crusoe, a desert island and no film crew or food parcels.

4, Gulliver's Travels, funny, and biting political satire.

10, Frankenstein, letters from the barmy doctor playing god. [Suspect drug-enhanced writing].

16, David Copperfield, one of Dickens best, I think.

21, Moby Dick, see. This is what happens when the person in charge is mad, and prone to bees in the bonnet. We didn't heed Melville's warning and voted Maggie then Tony into power.

24, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, another one for the dope-testers.

32, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, before bi-polar disorder was recognised.

33, Three Men in a Boat, the Guardian says 'one of the funniest English books ever written' and I think that's spot on...although...

35, Diary of a Nobody, another hoot of a book, nothing changes in domestic problems.

39, Nostromo, love, lust, money. Light on food and music. Nasty politics.

40, The Wind in the Willows, so long ago...

41, In Search for Lost Time, almost as long as the belle epoque it records.

44, The Thirty Nine Steps, so exciting. I was about ten at the time.

45, Ulysses, one day, a small cast, a huge book.

47, A Passage to India, I say, old chep, parse the gin.

48, The Great Gatsby, jazz.

49, The Trial, I've always wondered just how hair's breath away from this we are.

53, Brave New World, progress isn't fair, either.

54, Scoop, apart from being unable to write and report, what could hold anyone back in a Fleet Street career? Oh? No need for writing and reporting ability either, it seems.

55, USA, unusual, unique way of packaging a post war history of America.

56, The Big Sleep, I was very young, and I remember a lot of loose ends and inconsistencies bothering me.

59, 1984, I've always wondered just how hair's breath away from this we are.

60, Malone Dies, didn't understand but finished it. I need to re-read this one.

61, Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, everyman. Unless you're very odd.

64, Lord of the Rings, ploughed through MM's copies, eventually, by skipping the songs.

65, Lucky Jim, it was funny in England in the 50's, and in the mind of Martin's dad.

66, Lord of the Flies, plane crash, Animal Farm with boys as the animals.

67, The Quiet American, I read a lot, nearly all Greene's novels when pretty young, and have found them un-re-readable since.

68, On the Road, no need for the blood or urine test, you get high on the fumes reading it.

72, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I prefer The Ballad of Peckham Rye.

73, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mississippi Burning with a 12A certificate.

74, Catch 22, Milo Minderbinder wrote the modern bankers' handbook, and there's Major Major Major Major in there somewhere.

75, Hertzog, heavy themes, funny lines.

76, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 'postmodern' seldom tasted so good.

78, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, atmospheric and authentic.

87, The New York Trilogy, no fun in the maggoty big apple.

89, The Periodic Table, the joy of the test tube and Bunsen burner.

90, Money, Kingley's boy can write, too. Another very funny novel.

92, Oscar and Lucinda, the first Booker Prize winner I read.

95, LA Confidential, bad city, bad crimes, bad cops.

97, Atonement, can you right wrongs?

98, Northern Lights, see kids, the people in charge are all twisted out of shape and nasty. All of 'em.

99, American Pastoral, all is not well in 60's and 70's America.

A cliche, Reggie, is like a red rag to a bull to me...

Stinkin' Thinkin'

I'm weighed down with stinkin' thinkin'

Stinkin' thinkin' gets me nowhere

Maybe just not thinking. Maybe just letting others, too lazy to do more than recycle clichés and rubbish make your mind up for you?

Quentin Tarantino has had a rant at a (so called) television journalist who asked him his thoughts on the link between screen and real-world violence. Good for Quentin.

Isn't it the journalists' job to explode myths, provide dissenting voices, offer a different viewpoint? How come so many, and so many paid by licence-payers, are bone idle? How come they just trot out what you could get from the bloke at the bar or the granny at the bus stop?

To throw some grenades at some lined up myths:

No. Screen violence isn't linked to real-world violence. Not one bit. How many people have watched Kill Bill 1 and 2 without taking swords to their enemies? How many have watched Reservoir Dogs without ever pouring petrol over someone and severing their ear while listening to Steeler's Wheel? No doubt the bloke in the dock and his legal team, trying to get off by any means, will tell you that but for the Sam Peckinbah double bill he'd have been at home with his jigsaw puzzle. How retarded do you have to be to swallow that? That bloke in that dock would've done what he did in any case. Sort the people out. Shut up about films, video games, other red herrings.

Stop the cheap alcohol and you won't stop the City centre problems on a Saturday night. Twickenham. Lords. Two sets of fervently partisan supporters, probably 85% of them drunk as you like. Not a hint of anything other than banter. While were at it, the same applies to the lazy and feeble on-pitch / off-pitch behaviour influence thing. When rugby players fight, there's a slight chance of someone getting hurt. If fans followed footballers' examples there'd be a lot of posturing, some flailing arms and absolutely no damage done.

The RSPCA wasted money prosecuting the PM's hunt? The RSPCA spokespeople were treated like pupils with dog-eaten homework by lazy, nasty, bullying journalists. Enough to make listening to the Today programme difficult since. [A lazy, skewed, cheap-shot approach to journalism or A Tribe Called Quest? - I left the radio button in El Segundo].

The question is to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service: how come this and similar cases were thrown out as unwinnable, yet as soon as the RSPCA go it alone they win in court. Are you looking after the toffs or just rubbish at your job? It's one or the other.

The question is to Tony Blair: you openly boast in your unreadable, Tone as the second coming (of Maggie, maybe, mate) book that you deliberately drafted the Hunting Bill so that there were enough grey areas for the practise to continue. We should be claiming your wages back, you jug-eared war criminal.

The question is to every Chief of Police: what are you doing about these rich folk openly breaking the law? Who've you delegated the job to? What else are you turning a blind eye to?

The question is to the Chiefs of Police: it isn't the naughty films, or the naughty cheap beer, it's the people you need to deal with, or is the cover provided just too convenient not to hide behind?

I'm not the Mona Lisa, just a saucy geezer

I've left the rag trade to join the drag trade

Was Ian Dury our last lyrical genius?

His daughter's book, Hallo Sausages could be mawkishly sentimental. It could be an exercise in rocksploitation. But it's engaging and honest and she talks about 'Dad' in a straightforward, conversational way.

She describes his newly expanded, Chaz Jankel influenced record collection...'[it] now included George Clinton, Taj Mahal and Bootsy Collins...I've still got Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, Joni Mitchel's Hejira, The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and a Spike Jones and His City Slickers album that he gave me around this time.'

What wonderful gifts to give your kid. This, too:

So bye-bye rough trade for powder-puff trade

But I do feel a fright when my waspie's too tight

I'm not the Mona Lisa, I'm just a saucy geezer

Whose tits are made of sponge

I've left the rag trade to join the drag trade

With a very close shave and a permanent wave

Student loans for Olympic athletes

Having been lobbed large amounts of the pretty green by lotto players and taxpayers, should Olympians coining it large through selling Subways and teaching celebs to dive pay some or all of it back.

Absolutely not.

But only because that wasn't the deal to begin with, and you can't endlessly revisit agreements. That way lies misery and madness. Draw a line, move on. But realise your mistakes. In future, yes, there should be some sort of clawback clause. If we subsidise you now, and you make big bucks later, then you reimburse us and we will have funds to use on the next generation.

That seems fair enough.

Walkers crisps, salt and vinegar this time

Posh all caps font:

DISTINCTIVELY Salt 'n' Vinegar WITH REAL BRITISH VINEGAR

Still no discernible difference to the taste. Also, I'm not sure whether British vinegar is a truly superior product to, say, Balsamic or something like that.

Half our food is wasted

For every pound down our throats, there's another down the landfill. Blimey. There must be cooks like my mum everywhere. The microwave was a real boon to her. She could incinerate a dinner in half the time.

The top hat's just too old hat

There's no monopoly...

...on the Monopoly playing tokens. Apparently. They're due a shake up. Only a minor one. One of them, only one, has to go.

I think they could all be revamped in a major overhaul:

Top Hat. This is the bookies' favourite for the boot. As opposed to the Boot, that is. There's the baseball cap, the bobble hat, or my personal pick, the building site hard hat alternatives knocking on the door.

Iron. An outdated token of domestic servitude (so I'm told, I'm not sure I could find ours, and I'm right domesticated, me). I'd like to see a little tumble drier.

Scottie Dog. I think this has to stay. There's no place for labradoodles or alsators, or whatever's flavour of the month in the fashionable London suburbs. Maybe a pitbull? Down the Old Kent Road?

The Boot. A little metal Dr Marten. Has to be.

Thimble. More domestic servitude here. I really don't know the first thing about sewing. All the ex-matelots in the fire brigade could sew hems and buttons and all sorts. I've been known to resort to Superglue (I got months out of that fleece after mending it) and staples (great for turning up trouser hems as long as you don't tuck them into your socks). BLISS and I even tried to turn up some extra long cricket whites with the iron on foolproof idiot-proof everything proof tape stuff. Well. It 'aint us-proof. It failed before they came out of the kitbag. One of her mates did the sewing. She's in Bulgaria now (not on the run from any sewing-related crime or anything) so now they just stay much too long. Sewing machine? Miniature branch of Primark?

Racing car. Token most loved by the Monopoly-playing berk. Smartcar. Or a bike. Or a big 4x4 landing on Mayfair. With a special congestion charge square. London? Must be a Boris bike if it's a bike.

Bloke on horseback (exclusive editions only). A hunt saboteur, naturally.

Wheelbarrow (exclusive editions only). Apparently there used to be a sack of money, so combine the two and have a wheelbarrow loaded with sacks of money. No. Ride on mower.

Vladimir Franz

See? The Czechs have proper politicians:

This bloke's composed operas. I doubt whether Cameron and Clegg, working together, could compose a limerick. Apart from being covered in tattoos, his stance is this:

Anti-corruption, the importance of education and the nation's moral standing. He says the political system is so enchanted with itself that it's lost the ability to reflect, and that twenty years after the fall of communism there's been a lot of talk and promises and nothing's changed.

We need him here. How long've we had our political system? It's still full of cronyism and corrupt as can be. Hundreds of years on and they've done nothing to make the world a better place. Our education system is being reduced to one big sausage-factory providing vocational training. Our kids are seen as nothing more than flesh and blood cogs in the big corporate machine. Just look at the self-regard of politicians unable to get more than about a quarter of people to the polling booths.

We wuz robbed...not our rubbish, naturally...

Microsoft R&D robbed

Thieves broke into the Microsoft Research and Development Department. Microsoft must feel like the bloke who, on getting mugged for his phone, has the hoodie say:

“Actually, mate, you can have this back. Wouldn't be seen dead with one of those.”

Only Apple iPads were stolen. The Microsoft PR team should've got in there, handed out a load of freebies to their staff, and claimed that shedloads of MS gear was robbed too. Or just written it all off and kept it quiet. Imagine a BMW dealership being turned over and only a couple of traded-in Honda Civics on the missing list.

Mosquito? A buzz word for cronyism

Ms Mosquito is a good mate of one of those police commissioner blokes voted in by less than 15% of the population. He's made her his deputy (the job wasn't offered to anyone else, or advertised, or anything). £65,000 a year for a three-day week. The appointment has been sold with the £10,000 saving because she could be on £75,000 a year line. Sold, but no one's buying it.

The Underground is 150 years old

Isn't about time they cleaned the escalators on the Northern line then?

So the trains were chugging along in the tunnels (or the tunnel, at first) while at ground level people were still getting around on horse drawn transport. Touching their Oyster cards on and off the hansom cabs.

City fans won't pay...

...and who can blame them?

£62 for the Arsenal City game, on Sunday. A game that is on Sky TV, so it will be available in almost every pub in the country.

It isn't just the costs, but they escalate: £30 travel, a bit of food, maybe a programme, it's over the ton for the day out.

It's also the time. Four pm kick off, out of the ground at six. The Emirates transport nightmare, then the long trip home, with a working Monday on the morrow. Yes, there's nothing like a live sporting event, and yes there's something special about an away game, but no, not at any cost.

One of the Arsenal Internet regulars can't get there, and he tweeted: “Two spares for Citeh. Going for face value. £126. Each. Yeah, that's face value.” No wonder the manager's on £7.5m a year and the Whateveritishedoes Gazidis makes that up to a cool ten mill, a year, for a management team that's delivered jack for twelve years. No, Arsene. Fourth place isn't a trophy. It isn't anything like a trophy.

Champions' League football is a consolation if you mounted a realistic title challenge that failed. When you try to sell a consolation as an objective, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.